Pete Hegseth, Rachel Levine, and the Promising Return to Normalcy
The accusations against Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, are lamentable but, in a strange way, oddly refreshing. They represent a return to normalcy in Washington after four years of the bizarro world of the Biden administration and its unprecedented cast of oddballs.
The rumors of Hegseth’s carousing are regrettable because, if true (a big if), we really should prefer men of character and order in our highest positions of power and responsibility, particularly heading up the world’s mightiest military machine. This august magazine became famous in the 1990s for its epic exposés exposing Commander-in-Chief Bill Clinton exposing himself to everyone from the girl interns to the lunch ladies. One recalls the sage advice of the little general, H. Ross Perot, saying of Bill Clinton that if a man will lie to his wife, well, he’ll lie to you, too.
The venerable Harry Truman, renowned for his character, said the same. The man from Independence, Missouri was loyal to his wife Bess, and to his country. He tapped from the Army a man of unimpeachable character, the legendary George C. Marshall.
That said, I do regret to concede that the days of such sterling individuals seem to have long passed us. There simply aren’t many George Marshalls marching around anymore.
The accusations of drinking and womanizing leveled at Pete Hegseth remind me of charges back in 1989 against President George H. W. Bush’s nominee for secretary of defense, Senator John Tower. In Tower’s case, however, the charges seemed hard to believe.
Sure, one could imagine Tower, a Texan, slugging down shots of whiskey. But the nerdy, pudgy, stiff-looking, short — Texas Monthly magazine described him as “phenomenally short” — chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee didn’t have the physical appearance of a man who could have his way with the ladies. If you were casting actors to play John Tower in a movie, you wouldn’t choose Gary Cooper or Brad Pitt.
Pete Hegseth, however, strikes observers as a lady’s man who better looks the playboy part than John Tower did. Hegseth looks like he could hold his own with the high-caliber FoxNews babes. Emily Compagno or Carley Shimkus probably wouldn’t be out of his league. But if you wedged John Tower into the center seat among “The Five,” he would come off as an ogling, drawling, dirty old man, perhaps earning a slap backstage after pinching Kayleigh McEnany.
One would imagine that John Tower was no more appealing to the ladies than the un-dashing Captain of Chappaquiddick, Senator Ted Kennedy. Ted’s way of picking up girls was to toss them on the table at a Washington restaurant (La Brasserie), making “waitress sandwiches” for himself and his womanizing buddy Senator Chris Dodd. (Click here for the late, great Michael Kelly’s legendary profile for GQ magazine in February 1990.)
Teddy was a cad, a lout, a bum — truly the runt of the Kennedy litter. His older brothers Bobby and the philandering Jack were cooler with the ladies. Ted was just an intoxicated, porky slimeball.
Anyway, Pete Hegseth is a guy’s guy with bona fides to fit the part of both the carouser and combat veteran. A young guy in his early 40s, he not long ago earned two Bronze Stars for valor in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He’s also a smart guy and an athlete. He went to Harvard and Princeton, and at Princeton played D-1 basketball — no small achievement. Princeton is that team that always sneaks into March Madness as a 16th seed and around 11:00 p.m. has everyone around the country riveted to their TV screens as they nearly knock off Duke or North Carolina or whatever No. 1 seed by somehow holding the offensive juggernaut to 55 points. Hegseth actually played for one of those Princeton teams.
Yes, a guy’s guy Pete Hegseth is. And that brings me to the oddly refreshing part of his nomination.
No, we certainly shouldn’t approve of Hegseth’s misguided marital behavior. The man is already on his third marriage and is plagued by charges of infidelity and mistreatment of previous wives (even by his own mom). If he did that to my daughter, I’d slug him in the nose. But at least the kind of charge of corruption that Hegseth is facing offers a return to more normal times and conventional types of scandal. Unlike the Biden administration.
As a case in point, think and picture Rachel Levine.
Levine is what passed for a four-star admiral in the bizarre Biden administration. After a hideous, if not deadly performance, as secretary of the Department of Health here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania during COVID (which should have forever banished Levine from any public health position), Sleepy Joe ludicrously tapped Levine to be his assistant secretary of health. Why? Because the cultural revolutionaries staffing his White House wanted a “transgendered” individual high up in the administration.
But alas, even that position wasn’t high enough, and thus our intrepid president made Levine no less than a literal “admiral” in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. The omniscient Wikipedia hails Levine as “the first openly transgender four-star officer in the nation’s eight uniformed services.”
Quoting Wikipedia in Levine’s case further underscores how utterly abnormal the last four years have been under the Biden administration, and how barking-mad crazy the whole culture has gone. If you read Levine’s Wikipedia page, you’ll see something surreal, namely: There is no reference to Levine’s original male name or upbringing. Every reference is to “her.”
To be clear, I do understand that the insane ideological left believes that the birth names of “transgendered” individuals are “dead names.” They banish the names as if they’re dead to the person. It’s actually a dastardly affront to the poor parents of these individuals. The mother and father who bestowed these names upon the precious infant to whom they granted the gift of life are treated as non-entities whose say in the naming of their children is forever blacklisted.
The maniacs who created Levine’s Wikipedia page have banished all history of Levine’s male “identity.” It’s such a bizarre thing. In the biographical history of a life, no sane person would eliminate the individual’s basic facts of existence — the person’s story. But Levine’s are purged.
Seriously, liberals, ask yourselves: Is there something wrong with mere acknowledgment of the rudimentary facts of a person’s life? One would think that the LGBTQ lobby would welcome that conversion narrative as part of its celebration of Levine’s gender “transformation.”
In their warped ideological calculus, however, that is a moral no-no. Their ideology has made them insane.
All of which is to say, it’s refreshing to once again have political appointees with normal scandals — dudes like Pete Hegseth. Had Kamala Harris won the election, perhaps Rachel Levine could have been nominated as the next secretary of defense. The first transgendered Sec-Def! Yahoo!
Hey, why not? After all, Levine is a four-star admiral in the nation’s eight uniformed services. That’s an impressive credential for damned sure.
Personally, I prefer Pete Hegseth. Or perhaps I should say, I prefer the return to normalcy.
READ MORE from Paul Kengor:
‘We Win, They Lose’: Remembering Richard V. Allen
Justice Comes to HHS: Trump Taps Kennedy
That’s How You Overturn an Election
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